Autumn Bolter Brew Session

2nd brew - total contrast to first brew experience. Things went incredibly smoothly this time. Use of rice husks in mash and having an appropriate amount of grain for Grainfather meant the sparging was successful - no stuck mash. The resultant wort was more limpid and tasted very sweet and pleasant. pH measured was initially still on the acidic side so added 7.5ml Calcium Sulphate which brought the pH up to 5.0 to 5.2. Boil went well, started with 30 litres wort and ended with about 25 to 26 litres (100 min boil) Taste was quite bitter as I had used a lot of hops for bittering, but still very rich and pleasant malty flavour. I had issues with fermentation stage - using a conical fermentor from FastFerment for the first time. There was no bubbling coming from the airlock - I thought the yeast had failed, but it was fine - looks like the lid of the Fastferment conical does not close securely enough. I hope to remedy this for next brew by use of teflon tape around the screw threads. Also the fermenter does not come with an easy method of testing the brew - I have subsequently bought the tap addon which comes with an approprite drill bit to make the correct opening for the tap. My next brew will benefit from this addition. Use of the trub collecting ball at the bottom of the fermenter is a handy feature and helps withj removing yeast and trub from primary and secondary fermentations. In this brew I also used Harris Beer Finings - hydrolised form so it is a fine powder - this clears the beer and does not leave any floaty residues, so it is recommended. Primary and secondary fermentation and fining done in the conical then after 2 weeks the beer was transferred to a plastic pressurised barrel for conditioning. The conical fermentor makes this process easy, apart from the fact they provide a ridiculously short syphon tube (3/8"). I have since purchsed a long enough tube for the job (2m). CO2 added with an injector and 8g soda stream capsules. CO2 in this brew used primarily for dispensing from the barrel. Needed about 6 capsules to complete bottling which was done Monday 27th November 2017. Bottled 48 x 330ml bottles and 12 500ml bottles. This is roughly 2 litres more than the amount bottled from my first brew.